Purdue takes steps toward preeminence

May 7, 2007

On Monday, France Córdova stood before media, faculty, students and staff, beaming as she accepted her new job as Purdue University's 11th president.

Now chancellor of University of California, Riverside, Córdova brings to Purdue a rich background anchored in the sciences but linked to the humanities.

She also brings with her a number of labels: first female president of Purdue, first Latina president, first NASA scientist.

Córdova is used to such labels. They have helped define her career. But they should not overshadow her accomplishments as a scientist, an academic leader and an exciting choice to lead Purdue during the next several years.

A Stanford graduate with an English degree Córdova, worked for the Los Angeles Times news service for a time and wrote a novel based on her Mexico-based anthropology field work. After witnessing Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong's historic lunar landing, she turned her attention to physics, research and academics.

Born in France, she grew up in West Covina, Calif., a small city on the eastern fringe of Los Angeles County. Twenty miles west is California Institute of Technology, where she obtained her Ph.D. in physics; 35 miles east is UC Riverside, where she would one day be chancellor. Two hours north, on the California coast, is UC Santa Barbara, where she spent six years as a professor and a vice chancellor.

But Córdova has not been insulated in the west.

She has worked as head of Pennsylvania State University's department of astrophysics and astronomy. She has worked at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory.

At NASA, as chief scientist, she and her scientific team studied the interiors of neutron stars, diving into their mysteries using the Hubble Space Telescope. She's published more than 150 papers.

Purdue will need a strong leader to step into the imposing footprints that current president Martin Jischke will leave behind.

Jischke developed a strategic vision for the university during his tenure, helped raise more than $1.5 billion and improved the campus' ability to support Indiana economic development.

He helped launch more than $780 million in new facilities, including Discovery Park. The $300 million research and teaching complex is designed bring new ideas to the marketplace using interdisciplinary research.

All the evidence would suggest Córdova is up to her new task.

She has demonstrated vision elsewhere, when, as UCSB's vice chancellor, she initiated a program to encourage and fund research across disciplines, encouraging even undergraduates to participate.

She was the force behind a current initative to launch a medical school at UCR, and one of the reasons the University of California Board of Regents voted unanimously in November to support a proposal to create one by 2012.

A champion of diversity, she leaves a diverse community that is already mourning her loss.

She promises to increase a more diverse educational community here.

Córdova comes to Purdue with confidence. She doesn't shrink from Jischke's shadow and she made it clear on Monday that she intends to cast one of her own.

That asset may be one that most helps the university move into Purdue's next era -- one that promises new opportunities for both the university and its new president.